John Carmach has left id Software to join Oculus VR. The company is known for its popular Rift brand of VR headsets.

A statement from the company confirmed that Carmack is now Oculus VR’s new chief technology officer, and reads, “John is one of the brightest minds of our generation – pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can.”

Oculus is opening a new studio in Dallas that Carmack will head up, and it is currently seeking new talent.

In a statement, id Software co-founder Carmack said, “I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there.

“Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message.

“It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome.”

Carmack has expressed a great deal of public interest in Oculus Rift since he announced it would be compatible with Doom 3: BFG Edition last year. Last August we reported that Doom 4 will also use the device.

id Software was founded by John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack. It is best known for its work on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, as well as recent shooter Rage.

As discussed in the superb book on id’s history ‘Masters of Doom’ – seriously, read it – it was always Carmack’s desire to make the Holodek concept from Star Trek a reality through games. In Oculus Rift, he’ll get one step closer to that dream.

Definitely interesting. Having someone that has lead many advances in the gaming industry heading VR designed with games in mind could really push this. Hopefully with the big names involved, it will help get this out sooner too.

The majority of oculus users won't know what the first doom was, they only know oaths doom 3 game which while not terrible, wasn't very good, wasn't in any way revolutionary, had little to do with doom and so on.

For the majority of today's gamers, they have no recollection of anything revolutionary head done,for the slightly older, theyonlystarted memorable thing he did was when he want on a rant against his own fans because they would rather play unreal tournament than quake at some point cause quake didn't do anything new and was getting old just doing the same old thing.

Sure he contributed 20 years ago, then he hasn't been able to do anything since then, why does that mean he has anything to contribute today ? Other than his name, for those over 30 gamers.